


Biting Down

by villaingotyourcat



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29255931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villaingotyourcat/pseuds/villaingotyourcat
Summary: In the end, it is a pot of water warming slowly around you, and you do not run when it boils.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 67





	Biting Down

You never imagined it like this. 

In your fantasies, it is a hot rush, a match set aflame. It is brilliant, a resounding blow that splits you in two. There and gone, transformation, revelation, rapture. You were naïve to think it could ever be so clean. You were naïve to think you could ever see it coming.

\--

As a child, you loved sugary cereal. 

Your mother went to the supermarket only once each month. She didn’t like to be tailed in the crowded parking lot, swept along by the bustling throng of weekend shoppers, tormented by the ever-present wailing children in the next aisle. She much preferred the rhythm of the tiny Asian grocery store, heavy with the scent of fresh meat and produce, where the women greeted each other in thick accents.

But some things could not be bought on your street corner, so your mother would grit her teeth as she dressed you in sweaters and coats, an unending amount of layers that itched at your neck and held your small arms in place, and drove you into the heart of town.

With your mother’s hand like a vice around your own, you would walk up and down the aisles, shelves to the ceiling brimming with colorful packages and flashy words. You remember wondering how everything could always be on sale. 

The cereal aisle was in the very back of the store, a final treat for a cart already filled with peanut butter, toothpaste, a pack of chewing gum. Here, you gazed upward with wide eyes at boxes advertising crispy chocolate and soft marshmallows, all with a prize inside. You grabbed every box you could reach, your layers pulled taut against your skin as you stood on tiptoes for one with a temporary tattoo inside.

“No, Eve, it isn’t good for you,” your mother would always say. “It’ll rot your teeth.”

And so you shouted and kicked and screamed with all the strength in your small body, let the tears run down your hot cheeks as you begged between gasping sobs. There was so much to want. You did not yet know you couldn’t have it all.

Instead, you learned your mother’s swift hand of punishment, her burning shame at being the parent of one of these wailing children. She abandoned the shopping cart and took you by the collar, nails piercing the skin beneath your woolen sweater and heavy coat, and drove you home where no one could hear you scream. 

You learn quickly who you are allowed to be, what you are allowed to feel.

\--

And so you fantasize. You are far too old to kick and scream, but you have your daydreams, and even your mother cannot take these from you. 

Your first fantasy is simple-- you dream of running away. Sometimes, you imagine the places you will go, cities you’d like to see, but this is not the fantasy. It is the running that excites you, and you let it overtake you at night, long after your parents have gone to sleep. You decide which bag you will pack and which shirts you will take and which stuffed animal you will bring. You want to be taken seriously, so you limit yourself to just one.

There is a fire escape ladder in your closet, and you practice uncurling it, hanging it out your window just to feel the pounding of your heart, wonderfully loud in your ears. You will go in the night, walk until you don’t recognize the streets anymore. When the sun rises, it will be too late. You will be gone without a trace. 

\--

As you grow, the fantasy grows with you.

The second fantasy is similar-- you dream of running away, this time with Kyle Campbell. He’s captain of the junior varsity soccer team, has a fringe haircut that falls into his eyes, and sits one seat in front of you in algebra class. The whole package really. 

Once, he turns around to ask you for a pencil. Another time, he hands you a flyer for the championship soccer game. Sure, everyone gets one, but his fingers brushed against yours and that can’t mean nothing. So you sit alone in the cold October wind after school on a Friday afternoon to watch him play. They lose the game, but he looks so happy when he scores a goal that it’s almost worth it anyway.

You’re devastated when he asks Jenny Woods to the winter dance. You flush the pencil and the flyer down the locker room toilet and don’t go to the dance.

The third fantasy is the first of its kind-- you dream of killing Jenny. You like the idea of pretty, popular Jenny completely at your mercy, manicured fingernails prying desperately at knots she cannot undo. Her cool friends and designer shoes will not help her now. Here, she is the same as you, less when she’s on her knees, voice so shrill it’s almost a scream. In the movies, there is always a gun, so you use one now. It fits nicely in your hand.

\--

In college, you get a job answering phones at the front desk. The pay is shit and the chair they give you is worse, but it’s money, so you accept the fact that your back will be ruined by thirty and agree to more hours.

You have never considered yourself to be an angry person, but the longer you work, the easier it is to summon your rage. You discover that people find it easier to shout at you when you are just a voice on the phone, a fragment of a person who cannot fight back.

The fourth fantasy is rational-- you hunt down every person who yells at you on the phone over something completely out of your control and strangle them with your bare hands. It would be a satisfying way to kill, crushing their awful windpipes until they cannot curse at you anymore. You make them look at you until their skin goes cold beneath your grip.

\--

After five years of marriage and five years working for MI5, you are afraid the monotony will swallow you whole. Your fantasies are the only thing keeping you sane, and you rotate between them accordingly.

The fifth fantasy is for stressful days-- you quit your job by simply not showing up and leave Niko without so much as a note. You do not clean out your desk, letting it sit as an ominous memorial of the years you have wasted here. People point and stare but do not dare touch your things. Some speculate that you joined the other side, the pressure too great to resist any longer. Some say you got caught up with the wrong kinds of people, that you got too close and paid the price. Still others think you were bored, a mid-life crisis on the run. The longer you are gone, the more myth you become. They fill your desk but don’t throw out your things; they sit in a small box on a shelf somewhere too high to reach. Just in case.

The sixth fantasy is for slow days-- you tell Frank and all of MI5 to go fuck themselves and then go home and make Niko fuck you. You push him, shout at him, provoke him until he is red in the face, wind him up like a toy that you put down when you are satisfied. You smash your plates and bowls and glasses just to hear the sound they make when they shatter. You break Niko’s skin just to see the color of his blood on the bed sheets. You leave him with a copy of the Kama Sutra and a note that says “for the next one”. You burn all your bridges. There will be no mistaking what you have done. 

The seventh fantasy is just for you-- you take all the information you can get from MI5 and give it to anyone who wants it. You ask for nothing in return. You want only to see it all burn. You go home and cook Niko dinner and pour saxitoxin into his wine glass. After you’ve finished the meal, you tear him apart with your kitchen knives, chop until your wrists burn. You divide him among your pots, fill your home with the scent of your husband’s boiling flesh. When his organs are al dente, you spill him into the blender, watch him spin around and around. He fits nicely in a flask that you spill down a restaurant toilet. It is a thrill, your husband in a bottle. It’s the happiest he’s made you in months.

\--

She’s a vision in blue, and you’re doomed from the start. She’s caught you between Home Eve and Coworker Eve and Niko’s Eve in a space so unsuspecting you’re afraid you simply _are_ Eve. 

She is just a woman in the bathroom until she is an international assassin, an international assassin until she is your best friend’s killer, your best friend’s killer until she is your desires laid bare, your desires laid bare until she is bleeding out on her pure white comforter.

In the end, it is a pot of water warming slowly around you, and you do not run when it boils.

\--

After her, the fantasy changes.

The eighth fantasy is the only one without an end-- you chase her to the ends of the Earth, always advancing, never gaining. She is always just out of reach, and you pull all your muscles knowing it will all be vain. If you stop, you will lose her. If you catch her, she will kill you. So you chase her, endlessly, break the laws of time to do it. The wanting unravels you, and you’re determined to see how far the thread will go.

\--

You are in a car that is not yours and her hands are on the wheel.

The roads of Alaska would all look the same, if you were looking. Instead, you watch her. She is eating an apple while she drives, tearing the flesh apart with her teeth.

“Are you hungry, Eve?” She offers you the apple, juice running down her fingers.

You take it from her. The weight of the fruit feels good in your palm. You lift it to your mouth, fit your teeth over the places hers have been.

You bite down.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm now @villgotyourcat on Twitter. What have I done.


End file.
